FOUR HUNDRED TO ONE !

No sooner had I written (in the last chapter) that there are very few people whom I respect as much as Dale Gibson than I saw one of them: Jack Berry was at Nottingham yesterday. Jack's books have all been very entertaining so I'm sure that his latest one will be very good. I'd had a bad conscience for weeks, because he'd written to hundreds of people asking them to buy a copy of the book, and I'd done nothing with my letter other than leave it in my box of 'to be answered at some point in the future' letters. I really had been thinking recently that I must shortly order some copies, but I don't need to do so now because Jack was at Nottingham, selling copies out of the boot of his car. In addition to having been a superb trainer, one of the world's nice guys and a very good author, Jack is, of course, one of racing's greatest fund-raisers, and all the proceeds from sales of his books go to the Injured Jockeys' Fund. I don't know how it works (I wouldn't have put it past Jack to have paid for the printing himself) but basically all the income goes to the IJF and Jack makes nothing: if one pays by cheque, the cheque is payable to the IJF. So that's further reason to buy the book, over and above the fact that it appears to be choc-full of typically entertaining tales. (It also contains, apparently, a few spelling mistakes, as Jack rather apologetically told me; apparently these have been caused by the printers, and this has a ring of truth to it because in a quick perusal I have noticed that Jack's brother's name is mis-spelt, and I'm sure that that wouldn't have been Jack's error). Anyway, I was delighted to come home from Nottingham bearing five signed copies, one of which will be my bedside reading imminently. (Incidentally, if anyone wants to buy a copy, the book is called 'Better Late Than Never', Jack's address is Well Close House, Hunton, Bedale, North Yorkshire, DL8 1QW, and its price is 15 pounds to the IJF, which includes postage and packing).

So that was nice, and Stardust Memories' run was reasonably pleasing too. Although I didn't expect her to be placed, I had to have a bet because one wise/rash (delete as applicable) bookmaker had put her up at FOUR HUNDRED TO ONE. I had to have 5 EW at that to punish him for his disdain, but predictably I never looked like collecting a bumper pay-out: I've only once backed a winner at a three-figure price (Largesse paid 128 pounds on the Tote when he won his first handicap, even though his SP was only 33/1) and it was plain after they'd gone a few strides yesterday that this wasn't going to be the second. She did, though, as I had hoped, perform much more competitively than on her debut, so that was nice. If she keeps going this way she'll definitely be OK, and she certainly put in and had a proper race, which was good to see.
She was helped in this respect by a very positive ride from Tom McLaughlin (pictured on her in the parade ring) who stepped into the breach caused by injuries (I don't know what they are, so fingers crossed they aren't too serious) sustained by Steve Drowne in a fall at Kempton the previous evening. She's come out of the race well, so we'll aim to give her one more run in three or four weeks, and then that might do her for the year: she'll surely come back a stronger and better horse after a spell.

The other interesting aspect to yesterday was that, with the northbound section of the A1 closed because of a bad accident, I selected an alternative route which, although obviously quicker than going on a closed road, definitely fell into the 'scenic' category: although adding only 10 miles onto our journey, it added about 50 minutes onto the time the trip would usually take, but that was no problem because we got the races with two hours still to go before our race, and having enjoyed some lovely Leicestershire countryside along the Oakham - Melton Mowbray road, a part of the countryside I'd never previously seen. I hope the trip to Wolverhampton will be more straightforward tomorrow. We've had one change to the plan already because it seems that Steve will still be out of action, but it looks as if Rab Havlin will ride, and he'll be a good substitute. So let's hope for the best.

I can't close this brief chapter without mentioning that the two lovely fillies who came from Tattersalls aren't the only yearlings to have arrived here this week, because a Horse France truck deposited my little creation Grey Panel here yesterday morning.
Proud parent though I am, I can't claim him to be as physically impressive as the two fillies, but he's got a good head and has a good upbringing at Haras de la Cauviniere. And, besides, neither of his parents (Largesse and Minnie's Mystery) were flawlessly conformed (particularly his mother, whom he very much resembles) and they both won a stack of races and competed solidly for several consecutive seasons. So we shall, as ever, continue to travel hopefully.

Nor can I close without saluting several of Newmarket's senior horsemen, about whom you might have read in Emma's column in this week's Horse And Hound. Our neighbour Dave Morris currently has the assistance of John "Jinks, of Pebbles fame" Harkness in exercising his horses.
Their combined age is 120 (they are 61 and 59 respectively) which isn't ideal when dangerous situations occur; however, with age comes experience, and Dave's cool head was able to avert disaster when his rein broke on the Al Bahathri last week. Dave trains a chestnut mare (pictured with Jinks in the yard a couple of weeks ago) for the Duke Of Bedford, formerly Lord Andrew Howland. (I don't know her name, but I believe that she is due to make her debut in a bumper at Cheltenham this weekend). The duke came to watch her gallop last week, in which exercise Jinks, as usual, rode her, with Dave on Cragganmore Creek. All went well until they were past the stand on which the duke was standing, but as Dave started to pull up one of his reins broke. Happily all lived to tell the tale - and there have been plenty more tales coming out of the Czech Republic, where some of our former jockeys rode in a charity race on the Velka Pardubice card to raise money for the paralysed German jumps hoop Peter Gehm.
The pictured Andrew Hickman, who went along for the jolly but didn't ride (although he said that he might have sought a mount had he realised that the jockeys didn't have to weigh out), alerted us to this brahmafest, and I had further feedback from it when bumping into 'The Last of the Cavaliers' (triple Champion Hurdle winning hoop Steve Smith-Eccles) in Waitrose today. Steve has been retired from race-riding for 15 years, so wouldn't have been best pleased to find that the horse allotted to him for this come-back had only recently been broken in (as he said, "And I'm not exaggerating - when I was riding round the parade ring I went to pat him on the neck, and he even shied away from that"). Granville Davies, whom I recall as a jumps jockey in the west country in the '70s (I'm sure that he used to be the jockey of Milton Bradley's prolific firm ground winning steeplechaser Grey Dolphin) was also in the race, as was Chris Maude (although younger than the others, he's still been retired for quite a few years now, and nowadays is a valet). Anyway, it was clearly a mighty occasion, and I salute them for their courage and sportsmanship for riding in what The Eck described as "a six-furlong flat race - it was terrifying"! Let's hope that it inspires that formerly intrepid corinthian Richard Sims out of the moth-balls and back into the pigskin!

That generation of jockeys, of course, is generally reckoned to have been far dodgier than the present-day paragons, witness the fact that we are always told that the correct answer is 'Yes' to the Racing Post's stock question, "Is racing cleaner now than it was 20 years ago?". However, this theory has suffered a major jolt with the publication of Paul Nicholls' book. In the excerpt in yesterday's Racing Post, Paul came out with the stunning revelation that he was once asked to stop a horse. ONCE. And he rode for more than a decade. Of course he refused to do so and rode on his high horse back into the winner's enclosure to tell the trainer that he'd never ride for him again. By a happy coincidence, the trainer concerned is now dead so we can't hear his side of the story, which is rather a shame as it might have made for some good and long-running banter. But anyway, isn't it astonishing that a middle-of-the-road jockey could have had so many rides and only once be asked to stop a horse? That surely couldn't happen nowadays, could it? Mind you, I think Paul's experiences were probably unrepresentative even in that apparently purer era, as the reaction of one of Newmarket's "characters" David Dineley (champion apprentice of, I think, 1976) suggests: when I went to buy my Racing Post this morning I found David in the news-agent's, scratching his head in bemusement at Paul's recollections. I ought later in the day to have taken the opportunity to ask The Eck for his thoughts on the matter - that would have been a brahma!